Online advertising may be an important source of revenue for enterprises engaged in electronic commerce. A number of different kinds of page-based online advertisements are currently in use, along with various associated distribution requirements, advertising metrics, and pricing mechanisms. Processes associated with technologies such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) may enable a page to be configured to contain a location for inclusion of an advertisement. An advertisement may be selected for display each time the page is requested, for example, by a browser or server application.
Some online advertising engines, such as YAHOO! SPONSORED SEARCH may allow an advertiser to place a bid on a keyword or query. If a web surfer searches for the search term the advertiser bid on, the advertiser's advertisement may be displayed to the web surfer. This may be a viable mechanism for concept-based advertising; however it may only allow an advertiser to target web surfers based on a keyword or a query. This may require an advertiser to predict keywords or queries that may be searched by web surfers the advertiser may wish to target.